


some things aren't a simple dichotomy

by persephassax



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Force-Sensitive Hux, Hux is Not Nice, Interrogation, Kylo Ren doesn't have the force, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, Mind Rape, Pilot Kylo, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 00:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: Watching Hux use the Force always leaves Kylo a little hot under the collar. Watching Hux interrogate his rival, and Resistance scum, Poe Dameron is a show Kylo has no intention of missing.--The Role Reversal AU no one asked for, but that you're getting. You're welcome.





	some things aren't a simple dichotomy

**Author's Note:**

> This one also goes out to JZ, because she says things and then is surprised when I decide to write them. 
> 
> Some day, this might have a larger arc. But for now, this is just about two terrible dudes being awful, and poor Poe who is lovely and will absolutely be saved by Finn as soon as this tribulation is over. 
> 
> Please be warned that this fic is 99% sexualization of violence. Thank you.
> 
> Title comes from [A Softer World 29](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=29)

Hux has the resistance pilot strapped to the interrogation chair. Kylo doesn't, technically, have to be here, but he is loathe to hand his prize over to his co-commander. Snoke's favored apprentice stands tall and straight in his close cut layers. He's dressed head to toe in black, pants and shirt that pay an aesthetic lip service to the traditional fashions of Force users, but there's still something of the military style to them. His concession to drama – the cape that’s pinned to his shoulders – hangs down his back in rich folds. His hair gleams a full red despite the way the cold half-light of the interrogation room seems to leech the color from everything it touches.

Kylo is lurking in a corner of the room, he's stripped off the top of his flight suit, tied the arms around his waist. He's got his customary black shirt on underneath. It's sticking to his skin where he's sweating in the cloistered heat of the room, adrenaline still pumping through his veins. His breath is hot and muffled by the flight mask he still wears to hide his face. The other pilot is sweaty from where he struggled against the stormtroopers who dragged him out of the desert after Kylo shot him down over Jakku. He’d caught up to them and followed behind after he’d ripped himself out of his ship in the hangar bay. He had the impression that Captain Phasma, head of the storm trooper battalion he’d followed to the planet and Hux’s right hand, was laughing at him behind her shiny chrome mask when she saw him scramble after the troopers who were pulling their hostage away.

When Hux had met them at the door to the room they are now in, the Resistance pilot had stopped moving, his head pushed back and a grimace of pain contorting his features before he slumped down unconscious. Hux had one hand, palm open, fingers in a claw, facing the pilot's direction but still pressed low to his side. Kylo knows that he, himself, would have been much flashier in his movements. When he does combat training he can never resist the occasional flair with his staff or extra movement in his forms. But he likes the feel of his body moving, the thud of connecting a hit. It'll never compare with the dizzying free fall of flying, but it's a close second.

Kylo can't see Hux's eyes from here, but he can imagine the pale fire that burns in their depths. From what Kylo knows about the Jedi, the stories that Leia Organa told Ben Solo at bedtime, the things he remembers about Luke Skywalker, he thinks Hux would have made an excellent temple student. He is calm and controlled, quiet and thoughtful. There's a reserve to him that is often surprising, given his reputation. But Kylo knows equally well that Hux is well trained in the way of the Sith. The man's insatiable desire for power is the bright kernel that burns within him and fuels his connection with the Force. Kylo imagines he can feel (or maybe he can, he isn't sure) the Force where it gathers around Hux, prickling against his skin. General Organa is Force sensitive, so there is reason to believe that he isn't quite as deaf to shifts in the Force as he appeared to his former family members. But there's no use dwelling on that, not when there's a show about to be put on.

The pilot, Kylo’s thoughts sour at the epithet, that this man is _the_ pilot rather than simply _a_ pilot, is starting to stir. Hux has already started his intimidation routine. He's standing at the foot of the chair, watching the pilot – watching Dameron – while he struggles, testing the bonds that hold him down. It’s a bit like watching a cat play with its prey. Hux’s body is relaxed, and his calm silence just makes the Resistance operative more agitated.

“Do you know who I am?” Hux finally asks.

It’s a trick question, Kylo knows. Commander Armitage Hux of the First Order, the mysterious figure behind the Generals and the Admirals of the movement, powerful and dangerous, as liable to leave a trail of bodies in his wake as to pluck information from the heads of his enemies without them ever knowing, is renowned throughout the Galaxy.

“Commander Hux, the mad dog of the First Order,” Dameron spits out.

“Oh, I’ve evolved. I think the last one called me a snake,” Hux’s tone is conversational, perhaps even amused, to the untrained ear. There’s a cold thread of steel within it, however, and the quiet menace makes something shiver down Kylo’s spine.

Poe Dameron, _the Resistance’s best pilot_ , is sweating with the effort of pulling against his bonds under the oppressive air of the room.

“Didn’t know you needed back up,” Dameron sneers, tipping his head in Kylo’s direction. He bristles, despite knowing that Hux is more than capable of handling the situation. The man has more power at his fingertips alone than Kylo has when he’s at the head of his squadron of fighters, their guns primed to meet their enemies.

“Oh, _him_ ,” Hux says, dismissive, not even turning to look in Kylo’s direction. “Don’t you mind him, he just likes to watch.”

There’s a dirty twist to his words at the end. The double entendre is not lost on Kylo, far too obvious, but it’s below Hux’s usual standards of humor. The cruelty is still there, a sharpness to the words that unconsciously makes Kylo imagine that Hux’s words are knives, able to slice skin open and make someone bleed just with the sound of them. Kylo isn’t sure if you can flay someone with the Force, use it like a blade, a scalpel, a switch, but he’s sure that if it can be done, Hux would be the one to know how.

Dameron lets out a derisive snort. Despite his position, he’s maintaining the bravado that Kylo remembers from years past. They were acquainted, once upon a time. Rivals for the title of best pilot in the Galaxy. He knows that, technically, that rivalry still exists. It is distinctly more one-sided now, with the Resistance believing Ben Solo to be dead, the opportunity to face off with the full weight of history behind them is impossible. Kylo knows he’s made a name for himself nonetheless. Not the quasi-phantasmatic menace of Commander Hux, but a harbinger of certain death, the head of the First Order’s elite squadron.

“Tell me about the map,” Hux says. His voice is still that sharp, articulate calm that has lulled so many others into underestimating him. Kylo remembers with a vague fondness the alien who made the mistake of calling Hux “prissy,” mocking the sharp consonants and smooth vowels of his Imperial education. He’d screamed for hours, and when, finally, he went silent, Hux had emerged flushed and smiling.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Dameron says, looking up into Hux’s eyes. He’s undaunted, smiling with bloody teeth, gazing into the eyes of a man feared throughout the Galaxy. Kylo isn't sure that Dameron isn’t brain damaged. They say it takes a certain kind of recklessness, a careless personality, to be a pilot. It's something Kylo’s been accused of and something he is sure Dameron has also heard. But there is riding the knife’s edge of death in a TIE fighter or a dart and then there is taunting a man known to have left behind dead towns, the kind about which no stories are told, because there is no one left to tell them. Commander Hux, the ghost-maker.

Kylo’s rarely been on the receiving end of Hux’s full attention. There have been a few times where he has disobeyed on of the Commander's direct orders, but only one time did he almost get himself blown up during a skirmish with some Resistance-allied forces along rim. As he emerged from his ship, Hux had used the Force to drag him to the hanger bay wall and slammed him up against it. He’d still been running hot with adrenaline and the surprise of being manhandled had shot pure electricity through his nerves, lighting his entire body on fire from the inside. Hux had been incandescent with fury, his eyes bright and cold, like the sunlight glinting off the snowy tundra, and his invisible grip had been tight around the base of Kylo’s throat, pressed hard against his clavicles and the top of his chest, his toes barely brushing the floor. Kylo was breathing hard, had struggled to pull air into his lungs, chest pushing valiantly against the pressure Hux was exerting on his ribcage.

The Commander was nearly pressed up against him, lips white around the edges with fury, twin spots of color over his cheekbones, contrasting with the pallor of his space bleached skin. His hands were clenched in tight fists inside his gloves down by his sides. Kylo’s skin was prickling with tension, maybe the Force pressing pinpricks into his skin, maybe it was just the adrenaline, he didn’t know. He was lost in a kaleidoscope of sensation; the feeling of Hux’s breath on his face; the invisible pressure holding him against the wall; the thrill still pumping through him at escaping the jaws of death; the noise of the hangar bay, voices and machinery and moving bodies around them; Hux’s studied, intense quiet; the way the durasteel at his back was warming from his body pressed against it; the terrible glow of Hux’s pale eyes; the creak of the leather of Hux’s gloves as he curled his fingers tighter into his palms.

“That was incredibly foolish,” Hux had said, voice tight with a fierce and coiled violence. Kylo had licked his lips, bit at a piece of chapped skin, his eyes never leaving Hux’s green, green eyes, uncertain of what he was supposed to say.

Hux’s mouth had twisted and suddenly one of his gloved hands had slammed down on the wall next to Kylo’s head. The sound was loud and the wall shook and rattled against his skull. All of that power, the presence, the focus, the violence was tight in the air, Kylo could feel it all over, concentrated in the space where the Commander’s body was almost but not quite touching his own. The pressure on his clavicle built a little more and breathing was the least of Kylo’s concerns.

“I expect you to proceed with greater caution, in future” Hux hissed. “And when I tell you to fall back, _fall back._ ”

All at once the pressure fell away from Kylo’s chest, and he slid halfway down the wall before he could get his feet under him. Hux had turned away, his cape swirling and billowing behind him majestically as he strode from the hangar bay. Kylo could do nothing but watch him go.

“Unfortunately,” Hux says to Dameron, tone silky. “I do not have the time for games, today. Some other time maybe we’ll have time for this.”

Kylo shifts slightly, moving to the side. He wants to see Hux’s face. Watching Poe Dameron of the Resistance squirm is only half the show, after all.

Hux brings up his left hand, his first two fingers curled in a beaconing motion, tension clear in the pull of the leather of his gloves.

“Where is it?” he hisses. “Where is the map?”

Dameron is straining, face red with the effort of fending off some unseen violence, tendons in his neck standing out, fresh sweat catching in the dim light.

“The Resistance will not be—,” he grits out through tightly clenched teeth. “Will not be intimidated by the— _likes of you_.”

“Where,” and Kylo trains his eyes on Hux, the Commander’s voice is still quiet, but the power behind it, (the _Force,_ Kylo thinks to himself) is undeniable, “Is the map?”

Hux is very nearly smiling. There is a light flush to his cheeks, barely visible in the dim light, and Kylo doesn’t know if it’s sweat (he sort of doubts it, Hux’s body simply wouldn’t dare to do something so pedestrian as perspire) or something else, but Hux _glows_. He looks gleeful, the joy at doing what he does best an ebullience that spills over and out of him, giving the air a charge and making Kylo shiver, despite the way he can feel his core temperature rising. The hand he has raised with the curled fingers pulls towards him, like he’s drawing something out of the man in front of him. He hasn’t blinked in over a minute, his eyes bright and cold and unwavering. The man in front of him is breathing hard, twitching his head, like he’s trying to get away from something. The sweat is running down his temples, his dark hair matted to his skin, he’s shaking, under the onslaught of Hux’s unrelenting probe. Kylo wonders what it feels like, that sharp and brilliant presence pushing into your mind. He imagines it must hurt, how can it not? No part of Hux has ever been soft, as far as Kylo is aware.

His mind, like his words, must be finely honed, exquisitely sharpened, composed of an unmeditated violence that simply slices through whatever obstacles it encounters. Kylo has seen raw power, but he has never seen it wielded with the precision Hux uses.

Suddenly, Dameron lets out an unholy scream, long and wild, like an animal, something being split open, some vital integrity being torn asunder. He shakes, head pushed back, before going still, and this time Hux does smile. His lips part and Kylo can see the lines of his perfect, white teeth. The triumph makes the corners of his eyes crinkle and as his smile shrinks again, packed into a self-satisfied expression. He looks over at Kylo with the expression of a conqueror.

At the look from Hux, Kylo realizes he’s breathing heavily. The sound of it echoes inside his mask, where it covers his lower face. Vaguely, he recognizes the feeling lighting up his spine as a kin to arousal, he’s not quite hard inside his flight suit, but he thinks it wouldn’t take much to get there.

Commander Hux walks over to him, no thought spared to the body slumped over in the chair. Kylo isn’t sure if the Resistance pilot is still breathing or not, but finds he doesn’t have much attention to spare on the thought, not with Hux stalking towards him, the unholy light still gleaming in his pale eyes, radiating power and victory. Kylo thinks that if it weren’t for his mask, he might be able to taste it in the air. He stays stock still, uncertain what Hux’s mood means for him.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Hux is back to his casual tone, but there’s something breathy to it. He’s leaning into Kylo’s space, his eyes running over the side of Kylo’s face, tracing the line of the mask where it splits his face in half, obscuring his mouth, his jaw, the lower half of his cheek. Kylo can feel the Commander’s hot breath against the damp skin above the edge of his mask. He wets his lips behind the barrier, and feels a desperate pang that he could turn his face in to Hux’s own, feel the skin of his cheek as he brushed it with his nose, smell the power where it leaks out of Hux’s pores. He wonders if it smells like ozone, like burning, like starship engines, or like something else, something unimaginable. He holds himself still, feeling that tension, that tightly coiled power between them, like the time in the hangar bay. His stomach swoops and clenches at the memory, blood starting to run hot toward his pelvis.

“Well, Kylo?” Hux sing-songs a little on his name. It’s rare to get the man in such a playful mood. It seems that the only thing to make him something like lighthearted is unspeakable violence. “Did you have fun?”

Kylo can feel the man’s breath flutter through his hair. Hux wouldn’t even have to move, if he licked his own lips, his tongue would touch the shell of Kylo’s ear. A hand comes up and cups the front of his flight suit. The garment is baggy and the touch muffled by the folds of cloth, but he can’t suppress the shudder that runs through him at the touch of that leather encased hand on his crotch.

“The map is in a droid. A BB unit. Orange and white. Down on Jakku,” Hux whispers. “Go get it for me.”

With that Hux strides away and Kylo finds himself crumpled against the wall, not fully in control of his limbs once more, watching the scourge of the Galaxy walk away from him.


End file.
